Good subject for a term paper! — Wayfarer

I am glad that the discussion may see some extra use.

I should add here, that Spinoza and Leibniz are quite different - Spinoza is a more clear cut pantheist, whereas Leibniz can be considered a pantheist or an idealist. I am stretching the bracket too much already by including them both in the same category. One might say, that I cannot differentiate some varieties of pantheism and idealism between each other, which explains why I cannot distinguish eliminativism in its own right.

It might be of relevance that the origin of the term 'ontology' is derived the first person declension of the Greek verb 'to be' (namely, 'I am'); which has somewhat different connotations from today's definition. — Wayfarer

You probably allude to the fundamental inconsistency between the pursuit of philosophy and any denial of being. But, as I said, I am not sure that eliminativists are denying the existence of the mind. I think that they deny any distinction between it and nature - they strip it of transcendence. So far, you did not say what is your position on pantheism is, Do you oppose materialism, but tolerate pantheism? Because, if you consider the co-extensiveness of matter and mind that eliminativists prescribe appalling, I assume that you feel the same about pantheists.

My comprehension, at the moment, is that eliminativists do not think of our emotions, senses, and thoughts - to be descriptive of who we are. According to them, the proper way to describe our inner selves is to also perceive through empirical observations. But, as I said, I might be wrong.

Well, I understand that Mr. Dennett may have overused natural selection as explanative device, and may have run overboard with his derogatory metaphors on the human condition, but that still does not render eliminative materialism as irreconcilably (Daniel Dennett aside) "mindless" position to me. If one subtracts the aspect of personal attitude, and leaves only the ontological content, I still cannot distinguish eliminative materialism from Spinozian or Leibnizian pantheism. And the latter are certainly not absent of mind phenomenon. I certainly can distinguish eliminative materialism from mind-body dualism. I will surrender my attempts to elucidate the distinction, at least for the time being. May be I just need to get familiar with the theories and give the matter further thought.

First, I made a mistake above. I meant to say that a materialist would claim that the awareness is a projection of the brain, and not that the brain is a projection of the awareness. It is corrected now. (This obviously makes a huge difference.)

Solipsism is dissolved by empathy. — Wayfarer

My point was - assuming one treats the existence of the mind, rather then the body, as a starting point, wouldn't the theory I described be equivalent to that of eliminative materialism? If it isn't, what position would that be called?

I don't think materialists would acknowledge that. And by asking these questions, you're already outside the reductionist circle. — Wayfarer

In retrospect, projection may not have been the right term, because it implies some kind of codomain - a space to project onto. But a brain substate is a very primitive and base notion of awareness that doesn't require it to be separate from the body, and corresponds to the assumption of a medical model of psychology. Wouldn't that satisfy at least some eliminative materialists?

I just realized that the posters in this discussion may be concerned with the fact that the mind has only partial awareness of its own being. That is, that even if one assumes a materialist standpoint, there would be two states - of awareness and of being. The latter former would be a projection, i.e. a substate, of the former latter. As such, even a materialist would have to distinguish them and might call the state of awareness - the mind, and the complete state of being - the brain. Which raises the question - which state more accurately describes who you are? On one hand, neither one is truly yours to have, on the other, neither one is disassociated from you.

If you think that 'knowing you're alive' is a matter of faith then there's something the matter with your logic. :wink: — Wayfarer

This assumes that life can only be realized with a mind-body distinction. That is, that the material world is not capable of being the realization of consciousness.

With the risk of sounding annoying, I will ask once more. Assuming one is coming from a solipsist attitude, what position states that the mind is capable of completely witnessing its own operation and construction (and ultimate demise), in a manner which appears more extrinsic (through physical sensation, and not emotion), but is ultimately just another perception of the mind by itself, as it also relates to other minds and substances from which those minds emerge, as they exist together in a comprehensive orderly fashion (order, that we conceptualize as nature)?

PS: And how is this different from what eliminative materialists essentially claim?

Both are met with impossible circumstance: the one cannot prove with apodeictic certainty the mind is nothing but illusion, and the other cannot prove its apodeitically certain reality, so they both fall back on insisting they don’t have to. — Mww

I generally agree with the attitude of the statement, but wanted to remark, that some positions have assumptions that could actually be falsified experimentally. At least to the extent to which experimental information can be trusted. Some could even be considered logically inconsistent. Some of them, indeed, cannot be distinguished through consensus observations. And I personally cannot distinguish some even conceptually. It is a separate issue, that a position can be adapted to a new variant in order to survive a striking blow.

In summary - the differences are not always completely immaterial. For example, a dualistic free will theory would confront a materialistic one on the basis of what is physically possible. Idealism and materialism might be compatible as a practical matter, but mostly to the extent to which the former is skeptical.

Eliminative materialism cannot prove some forms of dualism or idealism wrong even in principle. But the same applies vice versa. At this point it becomes a question of faith and not of logic, and as such, it is not a subject of consensus.

Suppose we developed a machine that zaps your qualia away. You'll still function the same but just without any conscious experience. — RogueAI

If you are eliminative materialist, you do not admit the possibility of zapping the qualia away. The closest thing you would have to that is harming your body. Since the eliminativist does not believe in a transcendent mind, you can only suppress their qualia by killing them.

Would eliminative materialists actually use such a machine? Even if you paid them a lot of money? Or would they view it, as I do, as the equivalent of death? I think, when push comes to shove, you'd have to drag them to it, kicking an screaming. — RogueAI

The assumption that there is such a machine, already renders the eliminative materialism wrong, which voids the question. If you are asking, if they would take the chance, without knowing - this will be like like a "sell me your soul for a dollar" type of child prank. Some people would refuse on a principle.

Any interest shown in this positive matter and I'll happily roll over and tolerate what strike me as more or less unacceptable consequences of an unbounded spectrum... e.g. conscious phones, insects etc. at one end, and literal talk of mental pictures, concepts, beliefs etc. at the other. — bongo fury

To me - those are not logically unacceptable consequences. I feel obligated to stoically allow their consideration. The only thing I claim at the moment is that neither possibility appears fallacious. I make some speculations, but primarily in order to expand on their logical content.

Notice something here. 'Mental states = brain states'. Now, I ask you, what kind of physical object is '='? Where in the physical world, where in nature, do you find anything at all remotely resembling "="? You won't find it, because it relies on abstraction, on assigning values to things, and then saying that ‘this means that, therefore this equals that.’ — Wayfarer

I fear that the scope of the discussion will broaden dangerously, if we include epistemology into the mix. My personal opinion, assuming a materialist point of view - equality can be considered a mostly evolutionary cerebral construct, supporting our ability to forecast and infer conditions in our environment, made possible by the local reproducibility of the natural patterns on a global scale of space and time.

What kind of 'brain state' could equal 'equal'? And how would you go about finding that out? Even to ask the question, you have to make a lot of judgements about neural images and incredibly complex data - the brain being the most complex thing known to science. — Wayfarer

For me, this does yet falsify eliminative materialism, but makes it a theory that awaits further judgement. Isn't that true for most of philosophy?

.

Ask yourself this question - what does eliminative materialism eliminate? — Wayfarer

I thought, the mind-body dualism. Which I believe they refer to (obviously disparagingly) as the "common-sense" mind. But not the entire experience of life as such.

The word ‘mind’ doesn’t correspond to anything real: what we take to be ‘mind’ is simply the snap, crackle and pop of billions of neural connections programmed by Darwinian algorithms for the sole purpose of propagation of the genome. That’s all there is to it. — Wayfarer

If the mind is co-extent with its embodiment's behavior, how can it not be real. (Not that I personally claim that the mind coincides with its embodiment, necessarily.) If the person is metaphysical solipsisist, it wouldn't be real. But then he wouldn't be eliminative materialist at the same time.

This quote from Quine (lamely borrowed by me from Wikipedia) actually describes my attitude towards the eliminination exactly:

Is physicalism a repudiation of mental objects after all, or a theory of them? Does it repudiate the mental state of pain or anger in favor of its physical concomitant, or does it identify the mental state with a state of the physical organism (and so a state of the physical organism with the mental state)?

And the text following right after that (Wikipedia's own narrative) also presents my objection to the possibility of complete elimination, such as not just the elimination of the dualism aspect:

On the other hand, the same philosophers also claimed that common-sense mental states simply do not exist. But critics pointed out that eliminativists could not have it both ways: either mental states exist and will ultimately be explained in terms of lower-level neurophysiological processes or they do not.

The Wikipedia article then confirms your observations:

Modern eliminativists have much more clearly expressed the view that mental phenomena simply do not exist and will eventually be eliminated from people's thinking about the brain in the same way that demons have been eliminated from people's thinking about mental illness and psychopathology.

, which then refers to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here, where the following statement is made:

Given these two different conceptions, early eliminativists would sometimes offer two different characterizations of their view: (a) There are no mental states, just brain states and, (b) There really are mental states, but they are just brain states (and we will come to view them that way).

I still cannot fathom the nuance here. Isn't this just a re-phrasal with a different attitude. Unless the first group denies experience and existence. But I doubt it.

Let me inquire this - if eliminative materialists demote human beings, then what about functionalists or pantheists? I don't see how any non-dualist position would be different. Alternatively, which position would assert that we experience, such as through our mind, except that our mind is the same as our brain (co-extent with it, and has material nature)?

Again, I think that the mere existence of consciousness should not be considered at the same time as questions about the mind-body duality, the nature of the subjective, how free will manifests, the essential vs existential attitude to purpose in life, etc. I think that eliminative materialists recognize freedom and experience. They simply claim that freedom manifests (to a narrow extent) exactly due to our bodies, whereas other positions claim that it manifests despite of our bodies.

Otherwise, if they deny their existence ("I think, therefore I am not"), despite me being liberal as I am, I agree that their position would be confusing.

The analogy was, "when does a vehicle become truly automotive i.e. a true automobile?". — bongo fury

I see now. First, let's agree that a vehicle and a vessel have some similarities, such as that they carry cargo and passengers. Of course, their method of transportation differs. Let's say that this aspect is fundamental for the purposes of the analogy. Then, for me at least, a human brain is to an insect brain, or to a plant's perception, more like a ship is to a boat, or a raft. A vehicle and a vessel would compare (in the sense that they are considered functionally different here), more like a person's brain compares to a person's leg. The gradual boundary between the two would be difficult to define indeed.

That said, I must agree to some extent. The spectrum of sentient qualities may have a sharp slope at some point. Even with a lot of structural complexity. I do not consider this likely - sophisticated information processing structure suddenly being vastly less aware when compared to a somewhat more complex different one. But I cannot fully disregard the possibility.

For example, humans can only survive for about 80 human years. How long could the giant being survive in human years? — TheHedoMinimalist

Actually, you can switch the participants as many times as you want, as long as they keep notes of their neuronal state and pass them to their replacement.

It’s hard for me to comment on consciousness in a scenario which is so alien to me. Either way, I’m skeptical that this thought experiment would imply that ecosystems or social systems might have mental activity. — TheHedoMinimalist

I am not claiming soundness, only the following implication - that if machines can develop mental state, and since we can build machines out of people, it follows that mental states can be composited from other mental states with separate experiences. This would apply in the context of eliminative materialism, panpsychism, functionalism, etc. Although, I fail to distinguish those very well.

In any case, I am not forcing a statement. Everyone has the right to reserve their judgement.

But he doesn't, really. He says we appear to be subjects, but the appearance of subjectivity is, in reality, the sum of millions of mindless processes. — Wayfarer

You know his propositions better, but isn't he implying that we are self-aware by construction, and not intrinsically?

Some free will arguments have a similar logical issue. To me at least, the distinction between influencing your own decisions and being compelled by nature seems artificial. If you are an eliminative materialist or pantheist, you already manifest as part of nature, and therefore you would be acting as compelled by yourself. Similarly, in the case of self-awareness - how can you be tricked by yourself (your biological embodiment) into believing that you are yourself (a person), while you are in fact yourself (your biological embodiment). If your embodiment is completely coextent with you, and you are equivalent, how can you be not yourself. Or why would you be considered any more mechanical then your embodiment conscious?

Do we hope that this society replaces its vague binary (automotive/non-automotive) with an unbounded spectrum, and stops worrying about whether automotivity is achieved in any particular vehicle that it builds, because everything is guaranteed automotive in some degree? — bongo fury

I believe that you are claiming some ontological basis for placing human beings (or at least human organisms) in a distinct category here. There are physical hypotheses for this, e.g. the quantum mind. Or it could be a transcendental assumption, which is generally fine, but speaking in the context of my original question, this would not be acceptable for an eliminative materialist.

It’s kinda hard to imagine such slow responses would be influenced by mental states. Unless, the being experiences time really fast. But, how would experience time fast with such a slow brain. Having a slow brain doesn’t seem to make time go fast. So, I think it’s more plausible to think that the being is simply not conscious. — TheHedoMinimalist

It may or may not be relevant, depending on your angle here, but from a physics standpoint, processes do not recognize an absolute measure of time. Real time is not a concept for the current theories.

Now, I could not contend whether, if the environment operates at a normal pace, but the peripheral or central nervous systems slow down, the subject might feel being in a haze or slowing. However, if the environment stimuli slowed down together with the entire nervous system, I do not see how the subject would notice any difference. And in my thought experiment, the stimuli are artificially slowed down in their arrival to the brain - as if reality slows down together with the cognitive and perceptual functions.

And lastly, I do not think that the pace of thinking is the right criteria for consciousness. Reacting fast is common for insects and animals. I realize that their instincts are wired to transpire faster, but the information is still handled rapidly, and yet, it does not make them as sentient as we are.

The philosophy of mind that is based on this view, is that the mind is simply the harmonised output of billions of neurons that produce the illusion of subjectivity. — Wayfarer

Reading from the quotes that you kindly provided, I am left wondering what "illusion" means in this context. I understand the general sentiment expressed, and I can see how Daniel Dennett might reject subjectivity as its own substance (mind-body dualism) or intrinsic property (panpsychism), But I do not see how the determination and differentiation of one's self can be considered anymore an illusion than other biologically compelled emotions - like hunger or willfulness. We don't call those dysfunctional. In the end, I am not sure that Daniel Dennett considers the concept of self dysfunctional either, since he does accept the consequences from being a subject.

In this post, I will try to summarize my intuition so far, as to what are the differences between pantheism and an eliminative materialism. The list is tentative and some items may not apply to all variants of eliminative materilism (as I am not even competent to say for sure), but here it goes.

1) Theist attitude. Eliminative materialists have a stoic disposition conceptually, whereas pantheists have a reverential or deifying one.
2) Subjective. Eliminative materialists may defy the subjective as intrinsic property of nature. Instead, they might argue that it is emergent, compelled phenomenon, by biology, by adaptation.
3) Metaphysics. Eliminative materialists might argue that existence does not inherently pose further questions. That metaphysical inquiries can be explained with the inability of the human species to articulate harmony (broadly speaking) with their environment and themselves.

A few personal remarks.

I do not think that the subjective can be considered more illusionary then, say, hunger is. It has an evolutionary role. I do appreciate that not all awareness has to bound to one's self however. While researching this, I found out that the octupi have distributed nervous system, such that their tentacles individually possess a sense of their environment. Yet the organism has a unified sense of self-preservation, which might imply that its intelligence still operates under a singular concept of self. I am reasonably accepting of space-time relationalism, which to some extent implies the same attitude.

Regarding metaphysical questions - I see them as a struggle for total comprehension. Which to me is an essential duty for a sentient being. They may not always produce constructive answers, but create productive attitudes.

I always suspect that (replacement of heap/non-heap by as many different grades of heap as we can possibly distinguish) is a step backwards. — bongo fury

I understand, but what is the alternative? If anything less then a million neurons is declared not conscious according to some version of materialism, then that one neuron somehow introduces immense qualitative difference. Which is not apprehensible in the materialist world, where the behavior will be otherwise almost unchanged - i.e. there will be no substantial observable effect. At the million scale, normal genetic variations or aging would be sufficient to alternate the presence of consciousness, without significant functional changes otherwise.

I can better understand such claim at a smaller scale however. One might argue that sentience requires a number of discrete aspects, which might imply a minimal quantity of retention and processing units inside a sentient reasoning apparatus. But the claim would be in the dozens, not the thousands or millions, I imagine.

Otherwise, we might as well conclude that a lifeless rock like Mars is conscious because it’s capable of micro-movements like teutonic plate activity. — TheHedoMinimalist

But Mars has no analytico-synthetic capacity, just dynamism. Even in its own time scale, it wouldn't appear as sentient as human beings. I do entertain the panpsychic idea, that simple matter possesses awareness, but of very tenuous quality. Negligible by human standards. Mars does manifest adaptation, but It does not engender assumptions of complex underlying model of reality.

The brain from the thought experiment (the China brain idea, as pointed out) includes all marks of sentience that Mars does not have - great memorization, information processing, and responsiveness (through simulated peripheral output.) The time scale is off, but I do not see how this affects the assumption of awareness. In the post-Einsteinian world, time is flexible, especially when acceleration is involved, so I wouldn't relate time and sentience directly.

Wasn't that Searle's point? That the test was useless already, because an obvious zombie (an old-style symbolic computer) would potentially pass it? — bongo fury

I don't know really. But according to Wikipedia:

The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a program cannot have a "mind", "understanding" or "consciousness",[a] regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave.

This seems to me to suggest that John Searle wanted to reject machines sentience in general.

I agree it is interesting to poll our educated guesses (or to dispute) as to where the consciousness "spectrum" begins (and zombie-ness or complete and indisputable non-consciousness ends). I vote mammals.

Related to that, it might be useful to poll our educated guesses (or to dispute) as to where the zombie "spectrum" ends (and consciousness or complete and indisputable non-zombie-ness begins). I vote humans at 6 months. — bongo fury

For me personally, the value of the discussion is the inspection of the logical arguments used for a given position and the examination of its distinguishing qualities. Without some kind of method of validation, meaning - any kind of quality control, it is difficult to commit. I would like a scale that starts at nothing, increases progressively with the analytico-synthetic capacity of the emergent structures, and reaches its limit at a point of total comprehension, or has no limit. It simply would make interpretations easier.

I would to start by mentioning that bongo furry corrected me in his earlier comment about the definition of eliminative materialism. I would say that my view is more properly called functionalism rather than eliminative materialism. — TheHedoMinimalist

I understand. I cannot imagine how eliminative materialists would deny the phenomenology of senses, considering that senses are central to logical empiricism, which I thought was their precursor, but I am not qualified to speak.

Well, I’m not sure if plants have mental activity of any sort. This is because plants do not seem to be capable of autonomous action or decision making which is remotely similar to that of humans. They also probably do not possess sufficient energy to support something like mental activity. Plants are more likely to have mental activity than dirt though. This is because dirt doesn’t seem to be sufficiently compact to form an embodied entity which could support a mind. — TheHedoMinimalist

I would like to contribute to my earlier point with a link to a video displaying vine-like climbing of plants on the surrounding trees in the jungle. While I understand that your argument is not only about appearances, and I agree that analytico-synthetic skills greatly surpass plant life, it still seems unfair to me to award not even a fraction of our sentience to those complex beings.

This is difficult to precisely answer but I would make an educated guess and say enough to form a microscopic insect. I don’t think that my theory has to explain everything precisely in order to be a plausible theory. — TheHedoMinimalist

My thinking here is probably inapplicable to philosophy, but I always entertain the idea of a hypothetical method of measurement, a system of inference, and conditions for reproducibility. If we were to observe that our muscles strain when we lift things, and conclude that there is a force compelling objects to the the ground, this assertion wouldn't be implausible. Yet, it wouldn't have the aforementioned explanative and analytical qualities. But I acknowledge that philosophy is different from natural sciences.

The same epistemic difficulties exist for the binary view of consciousness which you accept. — TheHedoMinimalist

I don't accept any view at present. I am examining the the various positions from a logical standpoint. But, speaking out of sentiment, I am leaning more towards a continuum theory.

The reason why I think that the thought experiment you are providing me is absurd is because humans cannot remotely behave like neurons while maintaining their identity as humans or even humanoid creatures. This is because humans would have to carry out interactions as rapidly as neurons do with unrealistically perfect synchronization. — TheHedoMinimalist

The peripheral input could be fed in as slowly as necessary to allow a relaxed scale of time that is comfortable for the human beings involved. This doesn't slow the brain down relative to the sense stimuli it receives, only to time proper. But real time does not appear relevant for the experiment.

I am a vegetarian as well and I have made a similar arbitrary commitment. What I mean is, that at least logically, I cannot deny that plants may have some degree of feeling.

In a discussion of this nature - concerning generalizations of consciousness, I think one cannot make hard assertions. I am just trying to examine (for my own sake) the consistency of the arguments and the value of the statements. But the validation, by whatever means become available, if they become available, will probably not happen in my lifetime.

Edit: To avoid starting another thread, I just wanted to bring up that bivalves can feel pain and therefore have consciousness. This, for me, had partially resulted in a crisis of faith as a vegetarian, but I think may posit something useful for anyone concerned with Philosophy of Mind. That a decentralized network can still be conscious has interesting implications for the field. — thewonder

Just to explicate something to which you may have alluded here with the vegetarianism remark. If the hypothesis that bivalves can feel pain is true (, which doesn't seem particularly implausible in principle, and I wouldn't eat them either), why wouldn't other reactionary systems, such as those of plants, feel pain at some reduced level of awareness?

Do you here allude to, or have you just re-invented, the China brain? — bongo fury

It shows you how philosophically illiterate I am. At least the Wikipedia article doesn't say - "first proposed by ancient Chinese philosophers". :)

Also relevant, this speculative theory of composition of consciousnesses. Also it attempts to quantify the kind of complexity of processing with which you (likewise) appear to be proposing to correlate a spectrum of increasingly vivid consciousness. — bongo fury

Interesting. Thank you.

Doesn't ascribing consciousness to any machines with "software" set the bar a bit low? Are you at all impressed by Searle's Chinese Room objection? — bongo fury

I know the question wasn't posed to me. But albeit not focusing on AI, I actually am a software engineer by trade, so I thought I could interject. :)

For language translation or anthropomorphic simulations, AI can focus on fixed training set with fixed evaluation criteria. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) on the other hand, which is more akin to human sentience, is about reinforcement learning. The software agent has to pursue a goal, which is to gradually minimize some penalty, which it learns to do by acting imperfectly (or projecting the outcome of its actions first, if possible) and by simple trial and error. That is, a lot of the behavior is constructed through experience and goal reevaluation.

In this respect, the classical Turing test is outdated, because it limits the scope of the observations to static behavior. It cannot evaluate the progress the system makes to attune itself. In the experiment, the man in the room does not exert any effort to evolve with respect to some goal, it acts more like a classical pre-trained AI, which distances him from human sentience as well.

Also, it is worth noting that in the experiment, the man in the room acts like a cog in a machinery. Akin to a neuron in the brain, but possessing individual consciousness, the man infers that no other consciousness manifests, because its own consciousness is not employed. For this to be true, consciousness must apply in only one way in any given situation. This relates to my previous post, where I asked whether eliminative materialists allow consciousness to nest (and used a thought experiment to illustrate what I mean).

But in any case, translation requires very primitive intelligence. Not to mention that I agree that human intelligence may be extended in the environment (extended cognition from post), so even AGI, being individually engineered, cannot encompass some evolutionary aspects (unless we hard-code them) - empathy, social instinct, self-preservation, etc. In other words, any system thrown out of historical and social context can be considered unintelligent. The man in the closed room is starved from environmental interactions.

Well, a pantheist or panpsychist believes that all things have mental activity while an eliminative materialist might believe that only things and beings capable of decision making and autonomous action has the capacity to experience things. — TheHedoMinimalist

I am not proficient with the pantheist theories enough to speak of them. But I cannot imagine that any mature philosophy would ascribe the property of mindfulness/awareness to a kilogram of matter in itself. A heavy lifeless planet shouldn't be more intelligent than a significantly lighter human being. I presume, one would rather ascribe to matter the potentiality of consciousness, which would then manifest to a different degree in layers through emergent structures. For example, the ability to capture information, perform analytical processing, and produce anticipatory responses, could be used as criteria for the realization of this potentiality. I don't understand, how an eliminative materialist would differ from a pantheist with respect to any such criterion.

Other questions arise. Assuming we treat consciousness as a spectrum, rather then a binary property, which to my way of thinking, concurs with our understanding of how brain conditions affect our awareness, it seems natural to ask, how much capacity for memorization, analysis and responsiveness a system has to have, in order to be considered minimally conscious? Some such criterion has to exist, at least in principle, for both materialists or pantheists, even if the threshold is set at the vacuum state.

Let's examine some actual cases. The human brain has greater overall capacity for information processing than that of animal species. Both have (in general) greater analytical performance compared to plants. Doesn't it follow that animals are more conscious then plants? If so, doesn't it follow that they are actually conscious? Plants, on the other hand, are capable of some sophisticated behavior (both reactive and non-reactive), if their daily and annual routines are considered in their own time scale. Doesn't that make them more conscious then, say dirt?

But is dirt completely unconscious? Particles cannot capture substantial amount of information, because their states are too few, but they have reactions as varying as can be expected. After all, their position momentum state is the only "memory" of past "observations" that they possess. But it isn't trivial however. One could ask, why wouldn't they be considered capable of microscopic amount of awareness? Not by virtue of having a mass, but because of their memory and responses. If not, there has to be some specific point in the scale of structural and behavioral complexity at which we consider awareness to become manifested.

A different approach that leads me to similar conundrums is to think of the possibility of brain engineering. How many neurons (or similar structures) would we need to create an organism whose behavior can be considered minimally sentient - five, five hundred, five million, etc? How many neurons can process information in a manner that appears to be minimally intelligent? Why not one neuron. Wouldn't a single neuron carry sentience alone, assuming it has some suitable interface to a not immediately hostile environment.

They do not deny that it is a spectrum but they don’t have to think that it begins on a molecular level or that all objects are part of the spectrum. — TheHedoMinimalist

That is completely fair. But then they must, at least in principle (even if currently unknown) hypothesize a function that maps states of matter to degrees of being aware/conscious/sentient, a set of states, which are considered non-sentient, and a boundary between the two. There is nothing incoherent in that, but it poses interesting questions.

Probably not because ecosystems and social systems are not unified systems in the same way that an organism is. An organism is a unified embodied system which is composed of parts called organ systems which are composed of smaller parts called organs. All these organs work very closely together to maintain the organism. The same cannot be said of social systems. People who are part of a social system sometimes contribute to it and sometimes they don’t and they don’t make their entire existence about the social system. The very concept of a social system or ecosystem is a lot more vague than the concept of an organism. — TheHedoMinimalist

I would like to illustrate how I think societies and ecosystems are similar with respect to consciousness using a thought experiment. Suppose that we use a person for each neuron in the brain, and give each person orders to interact with the rest like a neuron would, but using some pre-arranged conventional means of human interaction. We instruct each individual what corresponding neuron state it has initially, such that it matches the one from a living brain (taken at some time instant). Then we also feed the peripheral signals to the central nervous system, as the real brain would have experienced them. At this point, would the people collectively manifest the consciousness of the original brain, as a whole, the way it would have manifested inside the person? Or to put differently, do eliminative materialists allow for consciousness nesting?

While societies and ecosystems are very different qualitatively to biological organisms, they have some semblances - like traditions and legislation as collective memory, public sentiments, herd mentality, group thinking, as analytical processes, and various internal and external affects - politics, environmental changes by human activities, etc. Assuming that, for eliminative materialist, consciousness exists in a continuum, manifesting as state and structure, I was wondering if it would be applicable (in some amount) to supra-structures made of other conscious entities?

Or to put in simpler terms, assuming the position of eliminative materialism, how would they precisely differentiate our sense experience from any other abstract system, simpler or more complex? — simeonz


I don’t fully understand this question. What do you mean by an abstract system? — TheHedoMinimalist

The term "abstract" was probably inaccurate, but the idea was to be able to describe all types of conscious structures not by exhaustion, but using a principle. In other words - not to name the human condition as conscious, or the animal one, but to use a rule that incorporates structures of various scales and appearances.

In light of my posts above, I want to make an overall remark. I am not trying to support eliminative materialism. I am just defending possible lines of argumentation. More so, I am curious if it can be reconciled with some pantheistic variation. And not because I am necessarily asserting the latter. (Although admittedly, I have respect for the self-containment of the position.) I am just trying to determine what precisely materialism is asserting. What are the consequences, what are the predictions it makes.

My whole response just went and gone somewhere. Second attempt. :)

Well, clearly the brain can exist without the mind. People die or sink into a permanent vegetative state. The mind is gone, but the brain continues. As for the mind existing without the brain - life cannot exist without chemical processes. Do you think life is just chemistry. Can you tell the difference between chemistry and biology? If not, I doubt you and I will be able to discuss this subject very productively. — T Clark

Let me restate my question. Do you think that a properly functioning brain, in all its biological aspects, can exist without manifesting a mind?
For this purpose, a dead brain can be assumed to be a non-brain. No more brain then a matchbox is.

"The mind is a widely observed phenomenon" says everything that needs to be said. Everything is "a widely observed phenomenon." That's how they come to exist for the observers. — T Clark

Yes, but if I were a materialist, I would claim that the the mind is not perceived first hand (such as by itself), but is merely attested to by the brain. And the brain does not always attest to externalities. Sometimes it purports intuitions and emotions. A materialist would then argue, the mind is simply a shared sentiment or concept.

Sorry - but a leaked capacitor is (I imagine) a piece of metal with goo all over it. Poor color quality is a term applied to an image of something when the color of the image doesn't match the color of the original. They're completely different things. Is an iron bar something different from 10E +24 iron atoms? "Hey, please hand me 10E +24 iron atoms." — T Clark

Yes, but the TV is still a system of leds, liquid crystals, capacitors, antennas, electromagnetic events, etc. The image is an aspect of the end result as seen by the viewer, which is one facet produced by underlying processes. A materialist would argue that the "image quality" is just term or conceptualization. That there is no "image quality", but just a state of the screen crystals and a number of preceding steps that evoke it.

Well, clearly the brain can exist without the mind. People die or sink into a permanent vegetative state. The mind is gone, but the brain continues. As for the mind existing without the brain - life cannot exist without chemical processes. Do you think life is just chemistry. Can you tell the difference between chemistry and biology? If not, I doubt you and I will be able to discuss this subject very productively. — T Clark

I confess this is my omission, but I thought that my general idea was suggested in the spirit of my question. Let me restate it. Do you think that a properly functioning brain, in all its biological aspects, can exist without a mind?
Edit: For this purpose, we can call a dead brain, a non-brain. At least not anymore brain then a matchbox is.

"The mind is a widely observed phenomenon" says everything that needs to be said. Everything is "a widely observed phenomenon." That's how they come to exist for the observers. — T Clark

The problem is, that according to a materialist, the mind is not perceived first hand by itself, but is only attested by the brain. Since the brain does not always attest externalities, but sometimes emotions and intuitions, the mind stops being an observation, but a shared sentiment. (Mind you, I am not defending materialism as a belief necessarily, just its deductive method.)

Sorry - but a leaked capacitor is (I imagine) a piece of metal with goo all over it. Poor color quality is a term applied to an image of something when the color of the image doesn't match the color of the original. They're completely different things. Is an iron bar something different from 10E +24 iron atoms? "Hey, please hand me 10E +24 iron atoms." — T Clark

Ok. But the image is ultimately the result of leds and liquid crystals and capacitors and antennas and electromagnetic processes. The "image quality" is just an aspect of the end result presented on the screen, which is also a facet of the events produced by the underlying mechanisms. The term conceptualizes this aspect, but it does not change the nature of the televising process in substance. An eliminative materialists would argue that there is no image (even less so, image quality) as a separate phenomenon, just a variety of actual events and mechanism, being treated when conceptualized.

Would I be accurate in saying then, that eliminative materialists don't deny personal experience, but just deny private aspects of personal experience that do not manifest in nature?

Then what would differentiate eliminative materialists from pantheists or panpsychists, aside from sentiment? In particular, does materialism deny awareness and self-awareness as a continuous spectrum for systems of different complexity? Would they consider an ecosystem or a social system to be aware or have sense experience, at least in principle similar to ours? Is my awareness and personal experience thereof related to the one of the ecosystems and social systems of which I am part. Or to put in simpler terms, assuming the position of eliminative materialism, how would they precisely differentiate our sense experience from any other abstract system, simpler or more complex?

(This unintentionally alludes to the hard problem of consciousness that Wayfarer wrote about.)

I am sorry if I ramble a bit.

It's clear to me that the mind is different from the brain. — T Clark

To say that the mind is distinct from the brain, to me at least, infers that the brain can manifest without a mind, or that the mind can exist separate from its physical embodiment. Otherwise, I feel that they will be simply co-extent.

I guess I'd say "obvious," although I acknowledge that what's obvious to one person isn't to another. — T Clark

That is why I used the term "common-sense" previously. I meant, that albeit privately experienced, the mind is a widely observed phenomenon. But I still struggle to find the scientific value of this statement.

The metaphor I often use is of a television. When I talk about the television device, I talk about LEDs, antennas, and speakers. When I talk about the program I'm watching on the TV, I talk about the sound quality, the colors, the images, and I guess even the basketball game I'm watching. — T Clark

But since the facets are related, you might be talking about picture quality, but mean leaked capacitor. How do you differentiate? Unless you can switch the program broadcast or change the TV. But, for the analogical mind-body case, I think this is the real problem, that it cannot be done.

Going back to your first statement, if the brain can manifest without a mind, because they are separate, then how do you know that you share your experience of the mind with the other people around you. After all, if all brains have developed a faculty for self-differentiation, they would reaffirm your belief. If the brain cannot manifest without a mind, what would be the distinguishing feature between your conceptualization of the brain and that of an eliminative materialist. (That is as much a question to you as to the materialist and goes back to my original post. After the clarification by Wayfarer, I can ask, are materialists panpsychists?)

Does that seem obvious to you? — T Clark

Nothing sounds obvious to me anymore. Epistemologically, that is. :)

I think I probably wasn't clear. We know the mind - what it is and how it works - the same way we know other things, by observing the world, in this case, primarily the behavior of other people, including their words. We also know it from the inside, from our own personal experience. Then, those two get combined as we imaginatively come to understand that other people have internal experiences that are similar to ours. — T Clark

I think I probably understand your general sentiment, as a practical matter, but I am unclear about some of the details. Do you mean that the mind is co-extent with any collection of animated brain tissue? If the mind is always incidental with a brain, is it distinct from the brain? What about animal brain, or a brain with a handicap, or an electrical circuit?

Edit: Of course, I understand that to some of those questions, "we don't know yet" is a perfectly valid response. But it just diminishes the analytic value of the statement somewhat.

I don't believe in the mind, I experience it and observe its effects in the behavior of myself and other people. — T Clark

You are saying that the mind is common sense, I suppose. This would be fine if the definition of the term "mind" was technical - as in a collection of empirical facts. But whose facts are those - are they the facts perceived by the very mind that they define?

Thanks. You have provided me with quite a few pointers. I first have to check them out before I can get back with a meaningful reply.

To be honest though, I am still left puzzled what exactly eliminative materialists believe. I suspect that I wont find out without some thorough research. Initially, I thought that they are denying the self-concept, but now I start to think that they are avoiding questions of existence.

I believe some eliminative materialists contend that “consciousness” doesn’t even exist, that it is folk psychology. To them, the concept should or will be eliminated in time and with new neuroscientists discoveries. — NOS4A2

This is what I fail to fully understand. I mean, not just the argument, but the very statement. Is this similar to relationalistic pantheistic position?

Let me elaborate where I see the parallels. According to relationalistic interpretations, such as those of Leibniz, time is an ordering. Concurring with some post-relativistic ideas, time is not a changing property, but is merely a human faculty through which the subject rationalizes its temporal beliefs. Thus the intentionality (if I use the term correctly) is not changing, but is associated with particular state of mind that the subject possesses in a temporal continuum of chronologically ordered versions of itself. Essentially, the assertion is that time separation is an illusion, consequence from our evolution and the natural law. However, if this is the case, it follows by analogy that space separation is an illusion as well. Meaning, that we are subject to spacial relations governed by natural law, which our mental faculties have evolved to appreciate. Assuming that time and space are an illusion indeed (although I am not necessarily making the claim), it follows that our self-concept has to be an illusion as well. It is merely a mental faculty that appreciates the natural law affecting our embodiment. But the embodiment is not particular to anything, except its self awareness.

If this is what eliminative materialists mean, It would seem to resemble a sort of Spinozian pantheism or Leibnizian relationalism. Or do they mean that the self-concept as a mental faculty is unnecessary and must be eliminated?

But check out “embodied cognition”, which I believe is superseding the computational theory of mind. — NOS4A2

I will, thanks. From a brief reading, I am not sure whether they are trying to localize the awareness to physical form or delocalize it, but it is related.